Louis announces $2,000 bounty if Senator can cite his claim

The speaker expresses disappointment over a recent vote in Colorado regarding an exemption to the right-to-repair bill. The vote, 22 to 13, resulted in the anti-right-to-repair faction winning, creating a significant loophole for "critical infrastructure." While the term "critical infrastructure" sounds reasonable, the speaker argues that the problem lies in allowing manufacturers to define what constitutes critical infrastructure. This could lead to situations where manufacturers declare their products, even common items like laptops, as critical infrastructure, thereby circumventing right-to-repair laws and refusing to sell parts like batteries. The speaker highlights similar instances of right-to-repair bills being weakened in other states. In New York, "safety concerns" led to manufacturers selling expensive assemblies for simple repairs, like a $5 battery glued to a $220 screen. Minnesota introduced a carve-out for game consoles, despite their increasing cost and complexity. The Colorado exemption, allowing manufacturers to define critical infrastructure, is seen as a dangerous precedent, likely leading to more products being deemed critical infrastructure. The speaker points out that Cisco and IBM spent approximately $600,000 to garner support for this exemption. During the discussion leading up to the vote, critical issues were ignored. There was no debate about the problematic definition of critical infrastructure or the fact that the companies pushing for this exemption are known to intentionally brick their own hardware when users attempt to install more secure firmware after support ends. Instead, a significant portion of the discussion focused on unverified death threats. A clip from the legislative discussion is played, where a senator condemns death threats related to the bill, emphasizing their inappropriateness and stating that such actions will not achieve desired outcomes. The senator suggests moving forward with the bill and working on an amendment to tighten the definition of critical infrastructure. The speaker criticizes the disproportionate focus on death threats in this context, comparing it to discussions on highly contentious national issues like tariffs, war, immigration, and gun control, where death threats are rarely brought up in public hearings despite the vast number of people involved. The speaker suggests this selective outrage conveniently emerges when powerful corporations like Cisco and IBM spend significant money to influence legislation. The speaker, as a public figure, notes the difference in how such threats are handled depending on the issue and the financial interests involved. The speaker recalls a similar incident in 2020 and 2021 during discussions about firmware versus source code, where a politician accused right-to-repair advocates of being racist to table a bill. The speaker questions why these types of accusations and discussions about extreme behavior only surface when consumer rights issues, widely supported by the public, are opposed by one or two companies spending large sums on lobbying. The speaker then explores the potential implications of legislating based on such tactics, likening it to reverse psychology. If sending a death threat from the opposing side could influence a senator to vote against a bill, it would be a simple way to manipulate legislation. The speaker sarcastically suggests that if this were truly effective, right-to-repair laws would have been passed years ago. The speaker highlights the absurdity of such a system, especially given the ease with which fake accounts and VPNs could be used to generate such threats for a small cost, especially for companies already spending hundreds of thousands on lobbying. Finally, the speaker references cisa.gov guidelines on maintaining critical infrastructure. Page 26 of a CISA PDF states that in-house staff, third-party providers, and the original vendor should all have options to repair critical equipment, emphasizing that more repair options are safer. The speaker argues that a critical infrastructure exemption to right-to-repair directly contradicts CISA's own recommendations, calling the entire situation a "dog and pony show" orchestrated by Cisco and IBM. The speaker expresses particular anger at Senator Carson, a co-sponsor of the bill, who repeatedly claimed that Governor Jared Polis, in his signing statement for the original right-to-repair bill, had requested a carve-out or exemption for critical infrastructure. The speaker states that a review of Governor Polis's signing statement reveals no such request. The speaker then offers a $2,000 bounty to anyone who voted for the exemption in the Colorado State Senate who can provide a citation for the governor's alleged request. The speaker notes the relatively small amounts of money some politicians received from lobbyists compared to the bounty, implying that finding such a citation should be easy if the claim were true. The bill has not yet passed the House, and the speaker hopes its members will recognize the absurdity of the situation.